COVID Character: Laverne

All things must end, even this COVID Character retrospective. In order to go out with a bang (and not a whimper) I have decided to end on a high note with perhaps my most favorite character of my COVID gaming career.

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Laverne

Aliases: None
Pronouns: They/them, but really any/all
Character Concept: Leshy seem cool. I'll play one of those!
Character Stats: 8th level NG Fungal Leshi Alchemist, Scroll Trickster, and Criminal
Campaign: The Fall of Plaguestone/Age of Ashes
System: D&D 5E
Campaign Status:Abandoned

 

"I would DIE for Laverne."

 

I often have no idea what I'm doing when I'm making a character. When that happens, I look through the book and try to find an interesting combination of things or a new ancestry/class/etc. that I've never had the chance to play before.

Pathfinder 2E has a lot of character options--which I like and appreciate, even as I am constantly overwhelmed by them. One of these is the leshy. They're sapient plant people. There's a bunch of different subtypes, including gourd people (you can store stuff in your head), and fungal leshy (which, yes, okay, fungi and plants are different, but it's a magical fantasy world of myth and whimsy, so we can ignore scientific accuracy just a bit here).

The second I saw the fungal leshy, I was like, "I'm gonna play one of those!"

And so, Laverne! They're a little mushroom person who is incredibly cute, disarmingly cheerful, upbeat, and enthusiastic. Despite this optimistic personality, Laverne was a little bit sketchy. They had a criminal background and would do a little breaking and entering and similar should the situation require it. Despite that, they were much beloved by everyone in the party, probably because I played up the, "I'm just a silly little person, don't mind me!" whenever I got the chance.

Laverne was an alchemist, which was a character class I never played before. I enjoyed alchemy at low level, but found it frustrating at higher level. Everyone else in the party seemed to outpace me in power and "doing cool stuff" fairly quickly. This was good for them, of course, but much less so for me. I think the big reason for my frustration is that the game wants you to specialize in the type of alchemy you do, but Laverne was more of a generalist. So I got a lot of little things as opposed to one big thing.

This turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise, because it gave Laverne lots of little levers to pull, no matter what situation they found themselves in. I doubled down on this aspect of the character by taking scroll trickster (which lets you make low level spell scrolls and create minor magical effects) and also by grabbing every low level magical item that the other party members didn't want and cramming them in Laverne's bag of holding.

This led to the most fun aspect of the character, which I privately called my, "Swiss Army Mushroom" time. Do we have a problem? Let's see what I've got in the bag! Do I not have exactly what I need in the bag? Let's see if I can cobble something together with random bits I find in the bag!

The most memorable example of how Laverne worked went a little something like this: We encountered a really nasty monster, which we of course tried to fight. It kicked our asses and sent us scrambling to a safer part of the dungeon. While the party licked our wounds, I reached into my bag to see if I could find anything that would help us defeat the monster.

Eventually, I settled on the following plan: I took the decapitated head of a spider we had previously beaten and filled it with the nastiest ingested poison I had on my person. Then I used a scroll that I found to cast a spell on the spider head to make it look like the most pristine, highest-quality spider head anyone had ever seen.

We walk back into the monster's lair and I apologize profusely to the monster for disturbing it. Then I present the spider head to the monster. The monster is overcome with how delicious the spider head is, promptly devours it, and is poisoned. Then the rest of the party jumped it from the shadows.

I don't want to say that it was no match for us after that (because, holy crow, greater barghasts are scary), but it was slightly weaker, and we needed all the help we could get!

There's a lot more I could talk about with Laverne: Like how they and Jora, our Champion of Desna became the unofficial parents of the rowdy, half-orc twins in the party. Or how I used their Criminal background make nice with some bandits who had been paid to ambush us (which raised a lot of questions!). Or how I helped the party to win a dance battle in the Mwange Expanse. 

Maybe another time!

 

 

COVID Character: Revna

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Revna

Aliases: Gudrun's Creepy Brother
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: No Eldritch Blast Warlock
Character Stats: 6th level NE Human/Reborn Hermit Pact of the Tome Warlock
Campaign: Gray Skies/Gray Seas
System: D&D 5E
Campaign Status:Abandoned

 

Hoo, this guy.

 

Our GM crafted a bespoke D&D world based on the Old Norse peoples and their legends. The inciting incident of the game occurred 15 years previously, when an undead army sacked the capital city of Nidaros and killed the king. Things had been not great, but mostly stable since then. Our village was ruled by Jarl Fritjof (also known as the Bloodeye) who was a huge jerk, and everyone in the party had caused him offense or problems in some way (which was easy to do).

The campaign started with a blót to give thanks for the arrival of spring. The villagers went out in their boats to catch whales for sacrifice. In the midst of that, a ship crewed by undead warriors with iron staples in their chests arose from the depths of the sea to attack us. From that point forward, we became Jarl Bloodeye's most expendable problem solvers, sent forth to gather information on what was going on and find the people responsible.

Along the way, we dealt with local politics, some werewolves with a grudge, the cult of Níðhöggr (the serpent that gnaws at the heart of the world), a group of beekeepers who worshiped/served an insane and murderous dryad, our families, and our complex interactions with one another.

Revna did not start out particularly well-defined for this campaign. I knew that I wanted to play a creepy warlock, and I knew that I didn't want to give that warlock Eldritch Blast. The reason for the second choice is I had been in parties with warlock players before, and that's all they ever cast. 

Instead, I chose Create Bonfires, and cast that spell all the time.

Revna started out as the weirdo that nobody likes. He didn't get along with anyone, didn't really talk, and lived by himself in a cave just outside of the village. He had a sister, Gudrun, who was apprenticed to Grandmother Spinner (the powerful, incredibly ancient, village seer), who could occasionally shame him into being somewhat human. He didn't like anyone, didn't want to help anyone, and had forsaken the gods to serve The Tender of the Dreaming Gyre, an abomination whose true visage had driven Revna slightly insane.

I learned a lot more about Revna as I played him, and can now provide you with a more complete, much more emo, backstory: Revna was a sickly child who was expected to die in infancy. His father (the town abusive drunk), hated him the moment he was born, did the "I have no son" thing, and insisted on naming his new son "Revna," which is a girl's name. Ironically, Revna's father died at sea "mysteriously" but Revna survived, growing up to be a sickly, awkward, and creepy child that no one liked. 

He was groomed to be apprenticed to Grandmother Spinner, since he was frail and also creepy. Grandmother Spinner rejected him out of hand, and so he broke with all tradition and found someone/thing else that would accept him as its servant. 

All of that was fine, and good enough, and I thought Revna was fun and cool to play. But then he died, and he became even more amazing than before. 

While fighting the Cult of the Gnawer, Revna took a sword to the guts and went down. Constitution was Revna's dump stat, so he blew all of his Death Saves and died. While everyone mourned and I considered what to make for my next character, the GM took me aside and told me about the Reborn template. For those that don't know, this template makes you kind of undead, in that you don't need to sleep, eat, or drink and you get bonuses for remembering things from your past life.

I agreed to this, and Revna sat up, screaming and puking up a mix of black fluid and white worms. The players were horrified and, certain that he was actually undead, tied him to the back of a horse and carted him back to civilization.They eventually released him and found him to be much more talkative (if a bit of an emo edgelord), reasonably astute, and more likely to be helpful to their overall goals than not. They grudgingly decided to keep them.

Revna's role in the party was really interesting. To supplement Create Bonfires, I got additional spells that helped with battlefield control. I also took the warlock benefit that meant I could see perfectly in the dark. This, plus my Reborn benefits, Misty Step, and Invisibility, made me the infiltrator, investigator, and rogue for a party that didn't have one. 

In time, Revna mostly won the trust of the party. Only Helvig, a down-to-earth family man and barbarian, disliked him with any intensity. Helvig's player and I assumed that, had the campaign continued, Helvig and Revna would have an epic magic vs. sword duel on a lightning-struck mountaintop somewhere. Alas, that never happened!

 

 

COVID Character: Sarth Hen'Hannar

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Sarth Hen'Hannar

Aliases: None
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: The Grey Mouser
Character Stats: 5th level Dual-Classed Human CN (3 Swashbuckler/2 Bloodrager)
Campaign: Rise of the Runelords
System: Pathfinder 1e
Campaign Status: Ongoing

 

This guy is weird, okay.

 

The concept for Sarth has been floating around in my brain ever since I read the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories back in the day. Sarth is an obvious nod to the Mouser, and I have written a few short stories of him that never went anywhere. I also played him in a LARP years ago, which never went anywhere, either.

We were starting up Rise of the Runelords, and I didn't have an idea for a character, so I decided to take Sarth out of his box, dust him off, and play him. I started out as a Fighter, because Pathfinder was and is nearly impenetrable to me, especially at higher levels. 

Things went off the rails pretty quickly after that.

Sarth loves fighting, so much so that when he is badly injured or when he faces a (to him) challenging opponent, he starts cackling like a madman out of the sheer joy of it. This caused at least one player to remark that Sarth was a barbarian, actually. I had never considered that (barbarians in D&D and D&D adjacent games always default to shirtless, buff, angry people with axes, and not small, slight, laughing people with rapiers). I liked it, though, so I dual-classed into barbarian as soon as I was able to. 

Somewhere down the line, when I was slightly more comfortable with the system, I asked the GM if I could switch from fighter/unchained barbarian to swashbuckler/bloodrager. These were, in effect, much more complicated versions of the same thing that fit his character pretty well. The GM let me do so, and now I have a lot more interesting things to do in combat...provided I remember to parry, occasionally.

Sarth is also Chaotic Neutral. This is a new thing for me, because alignments are a) silly and b) hard, and Chaotic Neutral seems doubly so, at least for me. Previous iterations of CN I have seen portrayed tend to be wacky/insane/obnoxious, and I tried not to go that route.

 

As a result, Sarth is a man with a lot of problems. I think he suffers from some kind of mental regulation disorder and is an adrenaline junkie. When he's on an adventure, he's somewhat more focused and practical, because he's riding an emotional high. When he's not on adventures, he drinks too much, acts a little strangely, and engages in self-destructive behavior in a desperate attempt to stay "up". 

He does, however, have something of a moral code that he tries to stick to. He made himself the personal minder of the one actual Evil character in the party, sticking by him to limit the damage that person caused and to kill them if they ever crossed the line. He refuses to fight fleeing or helpless enemies, though that's mostly because they're not a challenge. If you're on an adventure with him, he will do right by you, even if he really, really, really hates you, because that's what you have to do to survive.

Sarth also--and I honestly don't know where this came from--has a thing for monster girls. That lady that's turning herself into a demon? Yes! That ghost lady in the cursed manor? Yup! The lamia that we haven't met yet, but that I've heard is coming up? I'm already putting on my cologne, bay-beh!

Like I said, he's a bit of a weirdo.

COVID Character: Gwynn Delgado

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Gwynn Delgado

Aliases: The Korvosan Drifter
Pronouns: She/her
Character Concept: Living out my best Dark Tower life!
Character Stats: 1st level LE Half-Elf (Drow) Gunslinger
Campaign: Curse of the Crimson Throne
System: Pathfinder 1e
Campaign Status: Abandoned

 

I love Stephen King's Dark Tower series, so if a game lets me play a gunslinger, well sir, I'm going to be playing that gunslinger. Thanks, Paizo!

Gwynn shares more than just her profession with Roland Deschain. Like him, she is uncompromising in her decisions and wholly focused on her end goal. She believes in law and order (and, conveniently, sees herself as the just and proper arbiter of both), but she will absolutely walk right over you if you are bleeding to death between her and your goal.

Gwynn was one of a triad of characters I made to challenge myself. I wanted to play "evil" characters that could still work and play well with others. I subscribe to the belief that alignment in D&D (and adjacent games) is pretty silly, but also that there's a big difference between player character evil and Big Evil Bad Guy Evil. Like, yes, I'm a bastard. You all know I'm a bastard. But that guy over there wants to nuke the moon, and I will work with you to stop him. Because I have my own selfish reasons for not wanting the moon to be nuked. 

I also thought that Gwynn could have a bit of a narrative arc--similar to Roland's--where she went from jaded, single-minded loner to someone who was ever so slightly more optimistic and able to rely on her friends. And also to have friends. 

Alas, the campaign ended shortly after the first chapter. Which is too bad, because I had just introduced the core conflict of my character and I was waiting to see whether they would keep letting me tag along or whether they'd knife me in the back.

The inciting incident for the conflict could not have been better set up if it had been intentional. Here's what happened.

In chapter one, the players are brought together by their mutual hatred of Gaedren Lamm, who is a small-time crime boss who had wronged them in some way. Our plan was to track him down and kill his ass dead. 

The GM decided to expand upon this introduction a bit. Apparently, in the actual game, you go immediately to Lamm's house, kick in his door, and fill him full of stabs. In our game, we went from place to place tracking down a person who knew a person who knew a person who knew where Lamm lived. 

We finally get to the dockside, split-level shanty where Lamm is holed up and we prepare to go in for the kill. I commandeer a rowboat and start ferrying people over to the lower entrance of the shanty, at which point we are attacked by Lamm's pet alligator! 

 

The battle doesn't go great. We win, but our cleric is down, our sorcerer is out of spells, and everyone else is pretty beat up. I managed to get through the battle unscathed and also stabilized the cleric. Naturally, I stepped out of the boat and announced that I was going to go put N bullets in Lamm (N = as many as it takes for my rage to subside).

The other players inform me of our plight, and I calmly tell them that I had gotten all the way here, and I wasn't leaving without gunning Lamm down. I also point out that if we leave and come back, Lamm will have moved operations and we'll have to find him all over again.

The sorcerer makes a very persuasive argument, and I agree to withdraw. We, of course, lose Lamm, but we stumble into the second chapter of the adventure in which we find out the king has died. We also get hired on as mercenaries for the new queen. 

At some point, the cleric wakes up, and finds out that I was willing to leave them behind to kill Lamm. An argument ensues! 

What happens after that? We'll never know!

 

COVID Character: Luca Tartaglione

Special NPC Edition!

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Luca Tartaglione

Aliases: Big Luca, The Phone Guy
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: Random mafioso who became a major NPC.
Character Stats: Mafia enforcer and...secretary, oddly enough.
Campaign: Shadows of Yog-Sothoth
System: Call of Cthulhu, 7th Ed.
Campaign Status: Complete!

 

Two of the player characters in my Call of Cthulhu campaign were a mafia princess and her "uncle" (actually her father's best friend and one of his long time criminal associates). As a result, the game developed two major plot threads: The actual plot of Shadows of Yog-Sothoth and what we liked to call the Italian Soap Opera, which featured bootlegging, mafiosi, gang warfare, and toxic relationships.

For a variety of reasons, the players spent a lot of time rubbing shoulders with the mafia princess' father and his "legitimate business associates." They also spent a lot of time calling the mansion to talk to the mafia princess and to see if she was free to go on occult investigations with them.

Luca started out as a joke character whose sole function was to answer the phone whenever the players called. And that was it. 

But then the players started interacting with Luca more and more and, as a result, he got a lot more characterization and screentime. By the end of the campaign, he was the most beloved of my stable of NPCs--so much so that the players threatened to riot and quit the game the second they thought I had killed Luca in a firefight.

I leaned into this pretty hard and made Luca completely beloved in-universe as well. While he was recovering in the hospital after surviving that firefight, soldiers from rival mafia families sent him flowers and paid him visits. He was just that nice!

I played Luca as one of those semi-gentle giant characters. He was very nice, good with kids, friendly, and all that, but if his boss told him to break your legs, he would do it. He also came across as a little dim, but the players eventually realized that he had a lot more going on upstairs than anyone had initially guessed. They were a little shocked to realize that Luca knew they were investigating strange stuff, and that he was even able to point out weird little clues that they had missed.

RON: You knew about that?
LUCA: Well, you guys ain't exactly subtle!

I have to say that I liked Luca very, very much. Playing him was a joy, and if I could think of a reason that he could arrive on the scene...well, he arrived on the scene. I miss playing him (and that whole Call of Cthulhu game, if I'm being honest), but I'm glad that he got to survive to the end of the campaign with his sanity and personality intact!

COVID Character: Casimir Daggerford

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Casimir Daggerford

 

 

Aliases: Norbert J. Casimir, IV (They named the dog Daggerford)
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: "I want to play something really different!"
Character Stats: 3rd level CG Loxodon Artificer (Armorer) and Archaeolgist
Campaign: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
System: D&D 5e
Campaign Status: Ongoing

 

We decided to play D&D again, and I decided that I wanted to play something unusual. I had never played an artificer before, and the idea of playing an elephant person sounded really appealing (though I almost went with a tortle instead). 

 

I had been playing some...let's call them "ethically challenged" characters previous to this, so I also decided to go back to my comfort zone and play someone who was basically a good person. Casimir started out as Neutral Good (my default D&D alignment), but quickly shifted to Chaotic Good when he hid under the table to avoid the first fight.

So, who's Casimir? Well, he's a former archaeologist and current artificer. He's a good natured guy who gets along well with others, is a team player, and is just a little bit too full of himself. He's happy to expound upon any topic he knows anything about with little provocation. He started out as a history buff and a healbot, with little in the way of other useful skills. Now that he's gotten his 3rd level artificer specialization, he's going to reinforce our very thin front line with his teched up armor and his THUNDER GAUNTLETS!

We have recently completed the second chapter of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. So far in this campaign, we met Volo (yes, that Volo). Casimir fanboyed over Volo and got him to sign one of his books. Once that was done, we did a little favor for Volo in return for a promised payout of 100 gold.Of course, it turned out that Volo was strapped for cash, so he gave us the deed to a haunted manor in one of the nicer sections of Waterdeep.

Casimir had some previous experience with creepy tombs and ancient ruins, but had thus far never seen any ghosts or spirits of any kind. He repeatedly told his companions that the manor wasn't haunted because ghosts don't exist.

 

Cue the ghosts showing up and Casimir leaping into the dragonborn's arms, Scooby-Doo style.

 

We dealt with some of the ghosts, as well as with a big mess that someone had made in the basement of the manor. We have gone on to start work on renovations, pay off the various city guilds, and make plans to turn our new home into a tavern. 

I'm sure that's going to be the focus of chapter three!

 

COVID Character: Echo Kennedy

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Echo Kennedy

Aliases: None
Pronouns: She/her
Character Concept: A badass space pirate
Character Stats: A space pirate of questionable badassitude
Campaign: The Pirates of Drinax
System: Traveller 3rd Edition
Campaign Status: Abandoned

I have had intermittent interest in Traveller over the last while, so when someone expressed interest in GMing a game, I was happy to jump in and make a character.

Traveller character creation is interesting, fraught, and semi-legendary. It's game where you can die during character creation. At least, you could in earlier editions. Now you just have expensive surgery, live, and start the game even deeper in debt than you were previously.

(Cue that faction of the OSR gnashing and screaming about how "the wokes" have made Traveller into a kiddy game, I guess.)

Echo was one of the rare characters who started and ended character creation with her chosen career. I had heard that we were playing The Pirates of Drinax, so I made a space pirate. Easy peasy. I came out the other side of the process with some decent stats, gear, cash, and some ship shares, as well as one of the dullest backstories of the group.

I was slightly envious of "Two-Toes" a guy in our group who had washed out of the military, been a cop, was a drug addict, had a very sketchy background, and lost most of his toes due to frostbite on some backwater planet. Now that's a guy with characterization you can sink your teeth into!

Pirates is a classic, sandbox campaign that is (I think) also a good introduction to the game and the setting. the first part of it was pretty fun, if a bit "lead by the nose," (common with introductory adventures). We were given an awesome ship by the king of Drinax to go and do stuff in his name, ostensibly to Make Drinax Great Again. We spent most of our time planet hopping, trading to buy fuel for more planet hopping, and tracking down information on this other group of pirates that were causing problems.

Echo nearly died when she did not move quickly enough to avoid being shredded by something analogous to a Vulcan cannon. But our (very dodgy) doctor pumped her full of drugs and slapped her in a suspension tank, so she got better.

Despite the fun we were having, the game did not cater to the needs of the group. We prefer a lot more freewheeling, role-playing ridiculousness in our games, and Traveller is...not that...The biggest point of contention was that doing trade deals hinged entirely on making skill rolls and not on chatting up customs officials, befriending merchants, or finding good deals. It also required a lot of math and record keeping, so much so that we started calling it, "The Spreadsheet Minigame."

We wound up making a decent amount of cash money for our exploits, but we felt the storytelling elements of the game were rather thin. So we switched to Patfhinder.

 

COVID Character: Agent Waldo

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Agent Waldo

Aliases: [REDACTED]
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: A postal worker who has seen some stuff.
Character Stats: Postal Worker
Campaign: Operation FULMINATE
System: Delta Green
Campaign Status: A single adventure, which we completed!

Delta Green is an interesting beast. It shares a lot of similarities with Call of Cthulhu (from which it is derived). There are, however, a lot of differences between the two games that set them apart from one another. The best way I can describe these differences, thematically, is to imagine you're an American in a British clothing store who has just loudly asked for suspenders. You are, technically, correct (the best kind of correct), but you have also made some assumptions and have embarrassed yourself.

For those that don't know the game, Delta Green is the love child of Call of Cthulhu and the X-Files. Players play characters that are regular people who have, through no fault of their own, witnessed the Mythos. As a result, they have been recruited by the titular organization, and are periodically activated to go to dangerous locations and deal with Mythos threats. For the most part, their job is to prevent regular people from learning about Lovecraftian beasties, clean up ritual sites, and shoot monsters. 

I played Agent Waldo (name withheld), who was (and still is) an ordinary postman. One day, he had to deliver a package to a creepy barn out in the middle of nowhere. While he was out there, he met a talking dog who insisted that Waldo should burn the barn straight down to the ground. Waldo did, losing some sanity in the process, and was recruited by Delta Green shortly thereafter.

The adventure took place in Yosemite National Park in 2017. Brandon McGill, a young boy who went missing in 1980, has suddenly returned, and has not aged very much in the intervening years. Waldo and his team were sent in disguised as FBI agents, to interview Brandon and find out what the hell was going on.

Waldo turned out to be fairly levelheaded and likeable, trying to sooth and befriend Brandon while making sense of the occult nonsense occurring in the park. Unfortunately, he and his team were well out of their depths. Despite that, we managed to eke out what could technically be called a win, defeating alien ghost monsters with overwhelming firepower and flagrant disregard for the safe operations of golf carts.

 

COVID Character: Yaldandros

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Yaldandros

Aliases: Aachee, Exiled from the Cult of the Technoraven
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: Elderly healer with a complicated past
Character Stats: Expert Healer
Campaign: A Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure
System: Worlds Without Number
Campaign Status: Terminated

I have a soft spot in my heart for weird, post-apocalyptic fantasy. The Book of the New Sun, The Dying Earth, and the Dark Tower series are perennial favorites. So when one of my GM friends pitched a post-apocalyptic fantasy game for a bunch of us to play, I was all in it to win it!

We used Worlds Without Number, which is an entry in the X Without Number line of games. This version centers on the weird fantasy genre, especially of the type that includes science fiction elements. The system features a mix of old-school D&D and Traveller, for maximum crunchy goodness.

I played Yaldandros (a name I made up by smooshing Baldanders and Dr. Talos' names together and then futzing around with the result). He was old, wrinkly, cagey, and sort of cryptic. I made him an Expert (a person who uses skill instead of fighting or magic) and had him specialize in healing. I did this because it sounded neat, and also because the game seemed fairly lethal. I figured that someone who didn't rely on magic to heal people would be invaluable. 

We adventured in the ruins of an old wizard tower that seemed to be protected by some kind of lightning field. We mucked around in the basement and in a puzzle room, gathering such strange treasures as a jar of living, thinking meat that constantly regenerated itself (useful for the old larder), and some other things I'm a bit fuzzy on. 

Alas, the game ended early due to scheduling issues. Which is too bad, because I was enjoying myself.

 

COVID Character: Marius

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Marius

Est-a-me!

Aliases: Master-Certified Aqueduct Technician
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: What if Mario, but in Roman Empire
Character Stats: Strength 4, Smarts 2, Sneak 2, Smile 4
Campaign: The Cult of the Destroyer
System: Critical!: Go Westerly
Campaign Status: Suspended

This was a character I played briefly early on in the pandemic. I had totally forgotten about him until I spotted his sheet while I was organizing my game folders.I'm glad I found him, because he was pretty great.

This character is also notable for having been built (and played, obviously), in a system that I helped design. If you're interested in learning more about Critical!: Go Westerly, you can click that linky-link.

 

Briefly, the game is set in the Kingdom of Westerly, which is a very silly place that all the inhabitants take very, very seriously. There are singing pirates, monsters that have settled in the mountains in order of difficulty, giants that are divided into three clans (Rock, Paper, and Scissor), and more foolishness. The kingdom is to the west of a big swamp, which is a contested territory that it periodically fights over with the Great Eastern Empire. Whoever loses gets to keep the swamp.

Marius is a non-native of Westerly and hails from the Eastern Empire, which is Greco-Roman in theme. He is based on Mario, of Brothers fame, and works as an aqueduct repair person. He came west to Westerly for reasons that are lost on me, but can probably be summed up as: ADVENTURE!

While in Westerly, Marius teamed up with a bunch of other folks and was tasked with infiltrating the Cult of the Destroyer. The Destroyer is one of Westerly's six gods. He may be nine feet tall, clad in spiky black armor, and have flaming eyes and a reverberating voice, but he's actually a fairly reasonable guy and the patron deity of the monsters of the land. 

His cult, surprisingly enough, turned out to be an MLM scheme. We joined for the business opportunity, but also for the chance to bring down the cult from the inside. Our contact in the cult was an orc who wore a polo shirt and khakis and who, I think, went by the name Chad.

It was as fun and as silly as it sounds!

COVID Character: Eunice

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Eunice

Aliases: None
Pronouns: She/her
Character Concept: An older lady who makes good trouble
Character Stats: I forget
Campaign: The Ministry - Historical Canadian Edition!
System: The Ministry - A World of Adventure FATE Core
Campaign Status:Paused due to scheduling

In The Ministry, players are members of the Ministry of Rocketry, tasked with discreetly investigating and combating weirdness, such as aliens, monsters, and so on. I think the default setting just before the turn of the last century (1890s-ish) Britain, but our GM decided to move our game to Canada, for a few obvious reasons (they're Canadian). I was excited about this because I have been to Canada once, and I have watched a lot of Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Avonlea, and Anne with an E.

So, you know, pretty much an expert on that whole time period.

I don't know how it happened, but the players decided that we were going to be a trio of tough ladies who had a habit of making good trouble. This also, quite handily, explained why we were in Canada in the first place. We assumed that the management of The Ministry were all like, "you ladies are very good, but we also kind of want you far away from here. Say hello to the people in Toronto for us! Don't write!"

We only played one session, but it was a good session and I made quite an impression playing Eunice, an older lady who had no fear and took no shit (again, something well outside of my wheelhouse). Her defining character moment was pretty great, and it's something I'm pretty proud of.

The setup is that Eunice and one of the other ladies are walking around the high street of the town, getting the lay of the land and buying some things they'd need for their stay in Toronto. While doing this, we are approached by a nattily-dressed gentleman who begins to talk to them very quickly. As he talks, we realize that he is an advertiser/recruiter for a nearby brothel, and he is checking to see if maybe we would like to a) work for him or b) partake.

After considering my character's FATE Traits, I brusquely tell the man that I want to see his house of ill repute and also want to speak to the manager. He just about swallows his tongue as I swan into the brothel and rather imperiously make the following decree:

"I have no interest in working here, but I also have no particular animosity of your business per se. However, I want you to convince me that the women who work here are doing so of their own free will, and are well paid, well treated, and well protected."

The manager does, stammering through his reply.

To which I say, "Very good. Now, if this ever changes, or if I hear any unpleasant rumors about this place, I will be back."

So, that was fun!

COVID Character: Razorgrass Molly

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Razorgrass Molly

Aliases: Dread Captain Molly, Captain of the Sea Otter
Pronouns: She/her
Character Concept: Slightly reformed pirate, servant of Aldea
Character Stats: Specialist
Campaign: Blue Rose
System: Blue Rose
Campaign Status: Discontinued due to game complexity

After our successful Blades in the Dark game, we decided to try something new and different. We eventually settled on Blue Rose, which (I think) none of us had played before, and which promised a fairly different gaming experience - fantasy, but with romance!

The players were tasked with protecting a pop-up town on the border of the kingdom, which had been established by the Queen to provide homes and a safe haven for refugees. The town was populated by a wide assortment of characters, most of whom could be romantic partners, should we want them, and all of whom could be allies, quest givers, plot motivators, and plot complications.

One of the things that Blue Rose has going for it that I like is that the more successes you get on a roll, the more conditions you can apply to your target. So if you're fencing (a thing I did pretty regularly), you'd injure your target on a normal hit, but if you did really well, you could disarm them, stun them, or similar.

I only got to play my badass, bisexual, ace, swashbuckling pirate for a few sessions before the game ended. Blue Rose is an RPG in the D&D vein, meaning that it requires a lot of prep and learning a lot of rules. It was fun, but it was a bit too much for a group that had been playing Blades in the Dark for...three years? by that point, so we switched to something a little easier.

COVID Character: Commander Tada

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Tada

Aliases: None
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: Young samurai, eager to prove himself
Character Stats: I don't have the character sheet in front of me, so I'm not sure!
Campaign: Thousand Arrows
System: Thousand Arrows
Campaign Status:Ongoing

This is a new character in a new game, using both rules and a genre that is rather outside of my own comfort zone. 

Thousand Arrows is set in the Warring States period in Japan. The players are all allies to Hiro, one of the warlords who is trying to make a name and a kingdom for himself amidst all the strife. I'm not sure that he is "the good guy," as I think that the game is far too nuanced to do something like that. It seems that he is reasonably forthright and just, though, so that's something.

The game is based on Powered by the Apocalypse, which I've always had trouble wrapping my head around. Not sure why. It's just a thing. Rather than have stats or skills like "Strength" or "Metallurgy," my character has things like "Void" and "Lead from Behind."Combat is less about, "he misses you, but you hit him," and resolves more in the abstract. 

For instance, we recently led a 200 soldiers on an assault of an enemy fortification. I think the fact that we were going to win was a foregone conclusion, considering we had done a lot of scouting and had the advantage. Instead, the rolls were for things like, "okay, this was your first command. Let's see how you did. Make a Lead from the Front roll. Oh, that was a contested success. All right, you only barely manage to hold the bridge and, as a result, you lost more soldiers than you were comfortable with. Also, the other player characters noticed. How does that make you feel."

Despite being set during a war and featuring actual battles, the game is more tightly focused on drama, court intrigue, romance, and interpersonal relationships. It's basically like a soap opera, but with swords.

And this brings us to Tada. He is a young samurai who is desperate to prove himself. He's from a clan that has adopted the use of the arequebus (which they acquired from trade with Portugal). Arquebuses are devastating weapons, but at least one of my companions thinks that they are messy, stupid weapons that fly in the face of our traditions. 

I have also learned that Tada is someone who thinks in straight lines. Do you want that thing? Go over there and get that thing. Do you see an objective? What is the most obvious way to reach the objective? Do that.

The problem is that a lot of the game's focus is on things like soft power, manipulation, and social positioning, which are things that Tada is (and here is an understatement) not particularly good at. He has been successfully bamboozled by his grandmother (a skilled politician and schemer) and by his new ladyfriend (who he didn't realize was attracted to him until she kissed him). 

He's in a lot of trouble, is what I'm saying.

COVID Character: The Peacemaker

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

The Peacemaker

Aliases: Tretyak Chudin (his real name), The Nameless One
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: Skovlan criminal who joined a cult
Character Stats: Spider, member of the Cult of the Want
Campaign: Blades in the Dark
System: Blades in the Dark
Campaign Status: Completed!

Peacemaker started out as The Nameless One, a street preacher and criminal who had an army of urchins at his command. He joined up with a fellows Skovlander named Wraith and a non-Skovlander (but still sympathetic to the cause) merchant named Iris. Together, they started the Cult of the Want, which was a new religion that Wraith found when he was fleeing Skovland and randomly shouted out to the universe for help.

The Want, it turned out, was part of the original Skovlander pantheon of gods, each of whom is dual aspected. Some are straightforward, some are tricky, all of them are downright dangerous.

The Want, true to their name, gives its followers what they Want. Was this a good idea? No one knows, but probably not! But if you live in Duskvol and you are not one of the very rare, very privileged few, you definitely Want things. And thus, we had a lot of converts.

The Nameless One became Peacemaker when he used his street preaching and Spider abilities to stop a riot from breaking out in the streets of Duskvol between rival Skovlander factions. This was the beginning of his becoming not just a cultist of a god of a lost pantheon, but a speaker for the refugees of Skovland as a whole.

Peacemaker was very, very good at the physical world, at maneuvering through society, and getting information about people. He was almost completely dead to the spiritual aspects of the setting, which was interesting for a person who decided that he wanted to elevate not only the Want, but the entire lost Skovlander pantheon, back to their places in the heavens.

It helped that he was part of a Triumvirate: Wraith (who I think was a Lurk) had some magical abilities, as well as unorthodox means of getting to people and places, as well as a love of big explosions, and Iris, who was a Whisper and became so ungodly powerful in the mystical arts that she routinely did things that were supposed to be impossible. Like summoning LEVIATHANS (or, if you're Iris, "sea kitties") to eat the docks, devouring the life energies of lesser deities, and having a demon basically on speed-dial.

Peacemaker was often overwhelmed by his self-imposed responsibilities and by the actions of his own teammates. Oh, Lord Scurlock is in our kitchen making tea? And you told him we'd do what? And you blew up which building? And you tore out all of their blood? And put it in this jar? 

Our GM did a great job running the game and orchestrating an epic and satisfying conclusion. We explored a lot of themes relating to colonialism (which is present in the game, but not given as much of a focus as my GM gave it). The end game involved us getting all the artifacts of the Skovlander gods (including the Mask of the Teller, which Peacemaker is holding in his picture up there). As a result of our quest to hunt down the artifacts, we wound up discovering the Immortal Emperor's deepest secret.

And then we killed him. And brought the sun back.

So, what I'm saying is that the last thing the Triumvirate broke in their heyday was Blades in the Dark itself. We won! Everyone can go home and wait for John Harper's next game. Hoorah!

COVID Character: Mikey Yates

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Mikey Yates

Aliases: None
Pronouns: He/him
Character Concept: A regular kid from America who has cousins in the Yorkshire Dales.
Character Stats: Lucky 12, Creativity 10, Physical 8, Social 6; Puzzle Solver
Campaign: The Vampire Next Door
System: The Vampire Next Door
Campaign Status: Completed!

This was a one-shot that I played in called The Vampire Next Door. It's the summertime in Yorkshire in the 1980s. All the players' are kids and are all related somehow. They're all spending the summer at their grandparents' house. Very idyllic, very bucolic. You get to run around and do whatever you want during the day so long as you're back by supper.

There's just one problem. The players are all convinced that their grandparents' creepy neighbor, Mr. Alucard, is a vampire. Despite trying to explain about Mr. Alucard's funny accent, penchant for only going out in the evenings, very sharp teeth, and love of cravats, none of the adults believe the players. 

The entire game is all about running around town trying to get proof that Mr. Alucard is, in fact, a vampire without causing so much trouble that you get punished. 

My group of three players took things one step farther than, "convince the town the vampire is a vampire." We all, being seasoned Call of Cthulhu players, decided that we were going to end him instead. With a bunch of chopped garlic, a squirt gun full of holy water, and some kid-like determination, we hunted him down and ended his threat once and for all!

Oh! My character, Mike Yates, was a kid from America who was visiting his cousins in the UK for the summer. He was nice, if a bit shy, and had a thing for sitting quietly and doing puzzles. His much more active British cousins made him go outside and do some activities. Like basketball. And vampire hunting. They also teased him about his name but, because he's never watched Doctor Who, he doesn't get why they do that.

COVID Character: Lou

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.

Lou

Picture redacted for reasons of sanity.

Aliases: True name is hideous and unpronounceable by human tongues.
Pronouns: Usually he/him
Character Concept: Cthulhu, but, like, if he was a Brooklynite dishwasher at a diner
Character Stats: It was FATE, so there weren't that many!
Campaign: I don't think it had one
System: Nitrate City- A World of Adventure for FATE Core
Campaign Status: Abandoned

This was the semi/sorta sequel to the FATE superhero game in which Lutz played. This one is set in Nitrate City, which is a film noir setting populated with classic movie monsters. So it's kind of grim and gritty, with chiaroscuro lighting, fedora hats, too much cigarette smoke, and also the wolf man and mummy are private detectives, or something.

I decided to play as either Cthulhu himself or one of his star spawn--I never really decided. He had somehow wound up in Nitrate City and had gotten most of his powers taken away from him. Left stranded and friendless in an uncaring city, he walked the sepia-stained streets for a while until he got a job washing dishes at a local diner. The other player was his coworker, a waitress who was a Frankenstein monster.

So, my character wore an apron and a hairnet and had a heart tattoo on his shoulder with the word "Hydra" superimposed on it. He smoked too much, spoke in the best New Yawk accent I could manage, and was on the trail of some two-bit hood or other. But then the campaign ended.

Oh well, it was worth it just to make this silly character!

COVID Character: Khazana Stonespine

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.  

Khazana Stonespine

Aliases: None
Pronouns: She/her
Character Concept: A shy, bookish dwarven wizard
Character Stats: 3rd level Mountain Dwarf Order of Scribes Wizard
Campaign: The Shattered Obelisk
System: D&D 5e
Campaign Status: Ongoing

We tabled our Masks of Nyarlathotep game for a bit, because it was getting to be a lot, and decided to take a break to play some more D&D. We started out with Curse of Strahd, but realized that might be a bit much. So we ran away from Barovia (like smart people) and went to the Sword Coast, in the hopes of finding a lost mine, or something. 

This campaign is proving to be pretty fun so far. It's an expansion of the Lost Mines of Phandelver, which is written to be "your introduction to D&D," and it works very well on that front. There's the quick opening fight to get everyone up to speed, the introduction of the Big Quest, the arrival at Ye Towne, which is also a quest hub, and the promise of adventure in every six mile hex we plan to visit.

At present, we're working on clearing out some undead, and also a dragon, from a town that was destroyed in a volcanic eruption. Which means that, officially, this is the most D&D of D&D games, because we encountered a dungeon in session one and a dragon in session four!

Oh, I should tell you about my character. Herp! 

Khazana is a very nice, very sheltered dwarf from somewhere to the left of screen. She's as accomplished you can be as a third level wizard, with minors in Arcana, History, and Investigation. I made her dump stat Charisma (classic, baby, classic), but I decided that she was sort of shy and sheltered instead of being the broody loner what broods in tavern. This has also resulted in me playing her as someone very out of her depth in a big, wide, new (to her) world that has lots of monsters and intrigue in it. Oh, and a really nasty young green dragon.

Speaking of the dragon...we got some insanely lucky rolls and managed to blow it out of the sky. Then gravity asserted itself and its corpse landed right on Khazana. Thanks to dwarven constitution and some temporary hit points from one of her friends, she survived! Barely!

COVID Character: Varf

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.  

Varf

Aliases: None
Pronouns: He/Him
Character Concept: Goblin jungle scout and guide
Character Stats: 8th Level (I think) Goblin Ranger
Campaign: The Slithering
System: Pathfinder, 2nd Edition
Campaign Status: Complete!

I've been switching back and forth a lot between Pathfinder 1e and Pathfinder 2e, and nothing is more jarring than seeing how differently both games handle the goblins. They go from feral, dog- and horse- spree murdering creatures with no redeeming qualities to...you know...people.

And honestly, I think goblins as people make for more interesting stories than goblins as fodder for low level PCs, so I wholeheartedly welcome the change. 

It gets very weird if you look at it from a story perspective, though. Did they stop being feral murderers? Were humans (et al) so freaking racist against goblins that even the metatext of the setting suffered for it? I don't know, and I'm not going to wade through all the wikia pages to find out, so there!

The Slithering does try to sort of address this issue in universe, which is interesting. Humans (et al) realized that they were all being super racist and apologized. But there's still tensions on Golarion that have yet to be fully addressed. These tensions are exacerbated when a mysterious disease sweeps through the City of Kibwe, transforming humans into hideous blob monsters. 

Varf was part of a party of all demi-humans tasked with learning more about the disease and how to cure it. There were asymmetrical fights every ten feet, but a few really cool set pieces that mostly made up for it. There's also a lot of nice worldbuildy information in the game that helped me (a novice to Golarion) get a better grasp on the world.

Varf mostly shot his crossbow at things, occasionally used his horsechopper (yes, they still call them horse and dog choppers) when things got too close to him, and didn't do much else of note.

Except!

The module features an early encounter with a human supremacist and his small cadre of racist acolytes. We thought he knew something about the disease, and went over to his "school" to ask him about it. He refused to talk to us until we proved that we were people. 

If you are familiar with Pathfinder 2e, this encounter resolves with one of their little minigames. You have to make (in this case) Perform, Diplomacy, or other rolls to convince this racist that you were human adjacent enough for him to help you. If you get enough successes, you win.

Varf was way too angry to play along. He told this guy that he was just as valid as anyone else, human or not, and that it wasn't his job to prove it to anyone. He certainly wasn't going to perform like a fucking trained animal for him and his slackjawed followers. The racist could not, and would not, make Varf dance for his amusement. If that meant that the party would have to learn the information elsewhere, that was just fine by him.

"And then," I said, to the laughter of the group, "I roll Diplomacy."

COVID Character: Terry

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.  

Terry

Aliases: None
Pronouns: He/Him (I think)
Character Concept: Kobold accountant and pancake enthusiast
Character Stats: 12th Level Kobold Sorcerer
Campaign: Agents of Edgewatch
System: Pathfinder, 2nd Edition
Campaign Status: Abandoned

I hopped into this campaign after the first few chapters (chronicles? adventures?) and was told that I already had a character waiting for me, if I wanted it. The character was a kobold, so of course I said yes.

In Agents of Edgewatch, the players are a bunch of rookie cops on patrol in Absalom, the Pathfinder world's largest city. This city also has a 1920s feel in places, which was a bit jarring for me. (The only other times I've played Pathfinder, it's been high fantasy).

At some point before I joined, the players befriended an NPC who the GM had provided to be a bit of local color/someone they could talk to down at the precinct. This was Terry, a kobold who either taught (or was taught, I was never sure) accounting to (or by) the players. He also seemed to have a hankering for pancakes, which, I mean, wouldn't you?

The players were surprised when Terry became an NPC and revealed that he was a high-level sorcerer in their first fight. Hello, Wall of Force. After that, the usual shenanigans ensued as we fought our way through an arena, tracked down perps, and fought a bunch of really powerful undead in the sewers beneath Absalom.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition has this problem (at least for my groups) where the game kind of implodes around 6-8th level. At about this point, monsters can hit/affect you at will and you can barely hit/affect them at all. We still won, of course, but the combats were definitely falling on the wrong side on the nail-biting versus difficult slog scale.

Even with all that, we had fun. And a bunch of unwitting NPCs died from dissing Terry.

COVID Character: Brian Debney

Since the start of the pandemic, I have played more role-playing games than I ever have before. I thought I'd use my space to introduce you to my characters, and give you a little background about the system they're in, what they're like, and what they're doing.  

Brian Debney

Aliases: The New Guy
Pronouns: He/Him
Character Concept: A sensible, solid bloke and Great War Veteran
Character Stats: Investigator who is a Private Detective
Campaign: Masks of Nyarlathotep
System: Call of Cthulhu, 7th Edition
Campaign Status: Suspended, for now

Brian was the replacement investigator that I played while Catherine Planchett recuperated in a London hospital. I decided to make him a private investigator who was looking into some recent murders, although he didn't know the murders were cult related. I then had him go to Catherine's hospital room to interview her about her attack and managed to get myself invited along by the rest of the party.

Brian wound up tagging along for two of the England chapter's side missions that weren't part of the main campaign. He encountered a nice old lady in London that turned out to be a serpentperson and a nice young lady in Edale who turned out to be a ghoul. 

It turned out that he was way more helpful than I expected because, since he was a native, he had a better understanding of the lay of the land, the culture, and so forth, which was really useful. He also wasn't as hamstrung by the Customs department as his American friends, and was armed with his Webley the entire time.

Brian said goodbye to the group once Catherine got better. I thought I would never see him again, but it turns out we met up with him in our latest adventures in Kenya. On the Mountain of the Black Wind. Where he was imprisoned, out of his mind, and about to be sacrificed by the Cult of the Bloody Tongue.

That was a surprise cameo, for sure!